Positive changes to iTunes store today

[DigMe]

I rarely buy any music through the iTunes store (I get most of my music through emusic.com) but they made some nice changes effective today:

- Most iTunes songs will be DRM-free. I think all will be later this year

- pricing will change to three tiers. Some songs 69 cents, some 99 cents and some $1.29.

- Songs encoded at 256kbps

- iPhone users can now buy music directly over the cellular network. Wifi connection is no longer necessary.

This may actually cause me to buy the occasional song through itunes on my iPhone. There have been a few times when I wanted to buy a song but couldn't because of no wifi access.

bc

[tplyons]

Nice. I hope none of the $30.00 of music I just bought is in that 69 cent class.

I wonder if the DRM-free movement will allow us to re-download old songs without DRM?

[DigMe]

You'll have to pay 30 cents a song to redownload songs without DRM according to what I read somewhere...so that part sucks I guess if you have a big collection from iTunes.

bc

[tplyons]

Yep, that would be about $100 to re-download everything. That sure as hell ain't happening.

[bad_andy]

This is positive. DRM doesn't stop pirates and punishes honest users by introducing artificial compatibilities and problems with enjoying their legally purchased content. Now maybe if we could get a memo to Sony...

(Off soapbox.)

[iamthebassplayr]

Originally Posted by DigMe

- Songs encoded at 256kbps

This is a huge reason I haven't ever downloaded anything from iTunes... I hate it when a song goes into a cymbal roll and all I hear is nasty crackly metallic low bit rate encoding....

[bad_andy]

Originally Posted by Kevin Myers

This is a huge reason I haven't ever downloaded anything from iTunes... I hate it when a song goes into a cymbal roll and all I hear is nasty crackly metallic low bit rate encoding....

See, this just isn't a problem if you're into 80s electronica. Most of the samples were 8 bit/22k anyway, so 256k is kind of an improvement. The down side, of course, is that you're listening to 80s electronica...